1904 The Master of Game

Description

Colour Plates, Illustrated, Leather Binding, Limited Edition, Original Binding

The limited edition, being number 21 out of 600 copies, with the editor's facsimile signature to the limitation page. This is the first edition of this work since the work was written in the fifteenth century. 

Illustrated with a striking chromolithograph frontispiece, and fifty-one monochrome plates. The plates depict the beauty of the original illuminated manuscript. Collated, complete. 

'The Master of Game' is an immensely important medieval manuscript of Edward, the 2nd Duke of York's, hunting treatise. It's mostly a translation of Gaston Phoebus' work 'Livre de Chasse'. This manuscript was originally compiled between 1406 and 1413, and is the oldest English language book on hunting. Though this work was made during the fifteenth century it wasn't published until this modernised English 1904 edition.

The 2nd Duke of York was a grandson of King Edward III, and he held important positions during the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V - during the reign of Henry IV he held the position of master of game. In 1415 he was killed at the Battle of Agincourt. With a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt, this work was published whilst he was the President. Teddy Roosevelt was a very noted hunter, and published three of his own works about hunting, as well as contributing to many other volumes on the sport. Edited by William A. and F. Baillie-Groham. William and his wife Florence modernised the work. 

In the publisher's original reversed calf, re-backed in modern calf.